Invoking Safari on iOS without opening a new website - ios

The situation is like this:
User opens app from a website using a custom urlscheme
User does stuff in the app
User clicks button in the app to return to the website in Safari.
I have tried opening a new tab containing a javascript:window.close() but this does not work on iOS 6.1.
So my question is: Is there a way to open Safari to view the website the user left from? Either with a working new tab that closes itself or a different route?

When you open the app with your custom url scheme, pass the actual page url as an argument.
mycustomUrlScheme://mydomain.com?objectid=1234&callback_url=encoded_url
In your app, handle the url for the content info and keep the page url to open it afterwards. It will make safari open a new tab. But that should be a good start.

As far as i understand you can do it.
user opens mobile safari for example http://www.example.com
user clicks a link that is appscheme://open and the application become active
user taps a button to open safari for example http://www.example.com?q=test
for the third step you can use [[UIApplication sharedApplication]openURL:url]

Related

Firebase Deeplink not redirecting to app if select goo.gl

I'm integrating firebase in application. I created universal link that worked for Android & iOS both.
This worked great. BUT I got scenario where I clicked on goo.gl (PFA) link which was displaying on launched app right-top side. And from then no matter what I do, Deeplink will never launch my application.
I checked to clear history of device-browser but it's same. Any suggestion how to get rid of this issue/feature ??
You're absolutely right: the forward button is horrible UI/UX. It's one of the big flaws with Universal Links identified in this blog post. There is no way to disable the forward button, and once it's triggered, you're screwed.
The easiest way to re-enable Universal Linking behavior after it is turned off is to long-press on the link. Your best bet at getting a clean shot is to paste the Universal Link URL into the stock Notes app and try long-pressing it from there.
Long hold on the url and there will be option to open in app.
Usually when you click the "forward" link to open the universal link in Safari, you can re-open the app by dragging the page down. A bar will appear with your app name and an "OPEN" button. This works as long as you're still in the same URL.
Unfortunately, for Firebase Dynamic Links specifically, the link will redirect you to another domain (for example, from https://z99zz.app.goo.gl/zzzz to https://z99zz-c.app.goo.gl/zzzz) and this breaks this feature. The solution is to either add ?d=1 to the original link (https://z99zz.app.goo.gl/zzzz?d=1, opens a link debug page), or just remove everything after the domain (https://z99zz.app.goo.gl/, opens an error page). Now when it opens in Safari, you can drag down and see the bar.
In addition to imgx64 post. I had a similar problem: Firebase redirected to z99zz-c.app.goo.gl/zzzz and in this case system was not redirected to my app. I added "applinks:mzn3g-c.app.goo.gl" as Associated domain in my target capabilities and this does the trick! Even if you redirected to domain with "-c" suffix iOS can recognize it and will redirect to your app and show suggestion in Safari

Short URL not opened in App with Universal Links

I have set up Universal links in my iOS app, and it works with full URL like : example.com/path/
Recently, I want short URL like: t.cn/m , which map to example.com/path/ , can be opened in my App directly. So I added appplinks:t.cn at association domain in Capabilities.
But it doesn't work. It can't be opened directly in my App.It's opened with safari and i have to click the "open" button on pull-down-banner in safari to open in my App.
It seems like short URL can't be opened directly in my App, can it?
try applink instead of appplinks
from documentation

Apple Universal Link not working always

I started my applicaiton, its open an url in safari. On my website the user can login and do some work. After the user did it the website redirect to the universal link. At first it is working fine, but if the user start again my application, open my website from it (the safari already show my website), login again and redirect to the universal link, show the universal link, and on the top I see a bar where i can open my application.
If the user didn't login to my website, just clicked on the button to redirect to my universal link the ios9 open my application.
Have you got any idea, what's wrong? Maybe the iOS 9 doesn't like the autoredirect to universal link?
Universal links does not work with redirections.
check https://stackoverflow.com/a/32751734/127493
I just been on a similar issue where I clicked the link on the top right side of the screen, disabling the automatic opening in my app.
since you see the banner, the user has to scroll a bit (to show the banner "open" ) and all redirections will occcur on your app again (and not safari)

Opening apps and closing Safari tabs on iOS

We have an App that accepts donations and per Apple's guidelines (item 21.2) we can't do this in-app, it must open a webpage in Safari to perform the donation. We've got that bit working fine, and we can actually automatically invoke the App post donation and put the user right back where they left off. The trouble is that the Tab in Safari persists when the user returns to Safari later.
Is there a way to open an app from a webpage while simultaneously closing said webpage in Safari?
So apparently the way to do it is via Javascript. You can set the window location and then immediately close the window.
e.g.
window.location = "myapp://?stuff";
window.close;

iPhone http:// URL redirection

The main task I'm trying to achieve is to open my app with a URL.
Adding the custom URL scheme to the appName-Info.plist everything works fine using the corresponding handleOpenUrl: etc etc.
My point is that my app has got a webSite as well. So what I'm trying to do is, given an url to my users (tiny, short url doesn't matter) combine together these 3 different cases:
If the user opens the URL from his iPhone and he's got the app installed: open the iPhone app;
If the user opens the URL from his iPhone and he hasn't got the app installed: open the iTunes store URL of the app;
If the user open the the URL from his phone (android, tablet, etc) , or from the web, show the web page instead.
My problem is that I can achieve all these tasks separately but I cannot combine all together.
Note: tried to add the http://myApp.com to the UrlScheme but of course didn't work coz the http:// is managed by Safari in the iPhone.
Any idea? Help and suggestions would be really appreciated. Tks a lot chaps.
This SO question seems to have the answer you're looking for:
Check if the user-agent is that of an iPhone/iPod Touch
Check for an appInstalled cookie
If the cookie exists and is set to true, set window.location to your-uri:// (or do the redirect server side)
If the cookie doesn't exist, open a "Did you know Your Site Name has an iPhone application?" modal with a "Yep, I've already got it", "Nope, but I'd love to try it", and "Leave me alone" button.
The "Yep" button sets the cookie to true and redirects to your-uri://
The "Nope" button redirects to "http://itunes.com/apps/yourappname" which will open the App Store on the device
The "Leave me alone" button sets the cookie to false and closes the modal
The other option I've played with but found a little clunky was to do the following in Javascript:
This would solve one of your problems, it will link the user to the app page:
itms-apps://itunes.com/apps/APPNAME

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